Idealism versus Realism

Idealism versus Realism

        A Lady exists among the stars, suspended in the expanse of space, her cloak a silvery moon expanding into the Milky Way.

      “Reach for the Lady,” Teacher whispers, “If you extend your arms as far as they stretch, you will be able to grasp stars in your hands; bring them back to the world.” Mom says the same.

         My father was an astronaut—even as a child his wallpaper was littered with space posters. “First Man to Walk on the Moon!” one cried; a figure in saintly white suddenly surmounted the rest of the universe. “Most Recent Space Photography,” was one and there were many others, some simply pictures without words. The ceiling of Mom’s room is still decorated with suns and stars, old paintings my dad had spent hours on. My dad caught stars in his hands like teacher never dreamed. He soared so high in the sky, ‘dancing with the stars’ he once joked with me, that he died. On an expedition, his last, the I-04 shuttle fell off course and towards the sun’s gravity—the sun can do that, pull people in. I have this awful image of my father in my head, smiling hungrily while his dreams ate him to cremation.

         I believe that yes, there is a lady in the sky, a world of stars, a twinkling ideal. But I also know that her calm silver gown is merely a cloak and beneath it she is fire, unreachable and hazardous.

         “Reach for the stars,” they screech, fixed gazes staring the heavens down like they were the eyes of an almost domesticated tiger. What they are reaching for is death, the vision of hope and freedom they see is a castle of ashes. There can be no ideal; the ideal is unachievable.

         And yet still we gravitate, our little world does, around the sun—scientists say that this orbit is an act of falling. I cannot deny that we need the stars. I cannot ignore their beauty and mystery, the hope and desire which floods my veins instead of the blood I need. But don’t touch them, don’t ever touch them, because before you can you’ll be whisked away as flaming decay to a land where, detached forever from realism, you will rot without realizing you died, without the enlightenment that gravity exists to keep us in one piece, without the recognition that devoid of Yin or Yang, there is neither of either, that an imperfect world robbed of either Idealism or Realism is not Ideal.